March 4, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



879 



others is like ascribing the discovery of the 

 principle of natiiral selection to Goethe, or 

 Wells, or even to Comte himself, merely be- 

 cause in the writings of all these are to be 

 found adumbrations of it. Comte it vras who 

 formulated the law and developed it at full 

 length, devoting more than two volumes of 

 the ' Positive Philosophy ' to its elucidation, 

 ' in all of which,' said John Stuart Mill, ' there 

 is scarcely a sentence that does not add an 

 idea.' Suffice it to say that it is a historical 

 demonstration of the aphorism that ideas rule 

 the world, and constitutes a complete phi- 

 losophy of history based on the dictum of 

 Leibnitz, that in all ages ' the present is full 

 of the past and pregnant with the future.' 



But this law has a still deeper significance, 

 since whatever we may thinl?: of the theological 

 and metaphysical stages of history, the posi- 

 tive stage is the age of scientific thought. The 

 full characterization of this stage is the essence 

 of the positive philosophy. As George Henry 

 Lewes said, ' positive thinkers may be counted 

 by thousands, but no one before Comte had a 

 glimpse of the positive philosophy.' Now, to 

 add sociology to the ' hierarchy ' of the sci- 

 ences was simply to complete the scheme of 

 the ' Positive Philosophy.' Without it the 

 scheme was trxincated. But sociology was 

 more than any of the other sciences. It was 

 in a certain sense the science of the sciences, 

 since it presupposed and embraced all the rest. 

 An acquaintance with the others was necessary 

 to it, because it was a synthesis of them all, 

 and dealt besides with social phenomena, with 

 which none of the others had anything to do. 

 So far as ethics is concerned, M. Levy- 

 Bruhl clearly shows that it is with Comte 

 simply an aspect of sociology. Comte's ethics 

 is not a moralizing, or a treatise on duty or on 

 right and wrong, but a discussion of the origin 

 of ethical ideas, gTowing out of the, as 

 he claimed, spontaneous sociability of men — 

 in a word, it is social ethics. 



We need not follow our author farther and 

 point out the ' positive transpositions,' or re- 

 valuations, that the positive philosophy has 

 wrought in the ideas that prevailed before 

 Comte's day. It is sufficient to have shown 

 that M. Levy-Bruhl has set him in a just light 



before the world as a great organizing genius. 

 His knowledge relatively to the time he lived 

 was, like that of Spencer for his time, en- 

 cyclopedic. Different as the systems of these 

 two philosophers are, they each have prac- 

 tically the same relation to their respective 

 dates and times. Comte was the philosopher 

 of the first half, as Spencer was of the second 

 half, of the nineteenth century. Comte's 

 weight turned the scale in favor of the scien- 

 tific method, and inaugurated a positive, 

 which is the same as a scientific, Weltan- 

 schauung, destined to banish the hitherto pre- 

 vailing theological and metaphysical concep- 

 tions of the universe. As Comte's works are 

 more fully studied it is found that they con- 

 stitute a vast storehouse of ideas. When a 

 supposed new thought is put forth by some 

 modern writer nothing is jnore common than 

 to find that Comte had given clear expression 

 to it more than half a century earlier. Much 

 of the contemporary sociology consists in the 

 rediscovery of the truths that Comte reached 

 and fully set forth, and sociologists are just 

 beginning to learn that they must go back to 

 Comte as certainly as the metaphysicians 

 must go back to Kant. 



M. Levy-Bruhl, in citing Comte's ' Phi- 

 losophic Positive,' has used the fifth edition, 

 1892, which, unfortunately, is not uniform 

 with all previous editions, and this makes the 

 verification of passages somewhat difficult for 

 those who can only consult the earlier and 

 better known editions. The English transla- 

 tion bears the marks of ' business enterprise.' 

 The short note by Mr. Frederic Harrison is 

 magnified on the title-page into an ' introduc- 

 tion.' It is matter for regret that Mr. Har- 

 rison did not really contribute an introduction. 

 On the other hand, the name of the translator, 

 Kathleen de Beaumont-Klein, who contributes 

 an excellent preface, does not appear on the 

 title-page. 



The translation is in the main good, but it 

 is easy to find what are called ' gallicisms,' 

 such as using the word ignore in the French 

 sense of not to know, writing movement for 

 motion, experience for experiment, precious 

 for valuahle, conscience for consciousness, etc. 

 There certainly was no excuse in an English 



